Scientific Question

"What role do the hippocampus and amygdala play in the association between socioenvironmental factors and adolescent depression?"

About the Project

This is a fundamental scientific question in the broader context of adolescent mental health, addressing what role key brain regions (i.e., amygdala, hippocampus) play in established links between early life social and environmental experiences and lasting mental health consequences. However, this question is complicated due to the complexity/ambiguity of social and environmental factors, the long temporal windows of childhood and adolescence, and the many neural phenotypes that change during subcortical development. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study provides an incredible opportunity to study adolescent mental health in a pluralistic, team study for a comprehensive, heuristic understanding of this question. By taking a many-worlds approach, the PATHS project aims to leverage analytic flexibility to better understand the neurobiology of socioenvironmental influences on adolescent depression.

Project Goals

• Triangulate an answer to our scientific question by using the variability in variables/analyses/results (e.g., compare results from different time points to address temporality; compare results across statistical models to address amygdala/hippocampus roles; compare covariate use to address confounding factors)
• Describe analytic flexibility in ABCD data analyses based on teams’ choices of variables, models, statistics, computational environments, and research experience/expertise
• Demonstrate why this central question is so hard to answer (e.g., analytic flexibility, vague constructs, temporality
• Identify different output and results formats to assess opportunities and challenges for future meta-analyses of ABCD findings

Timeline

Organizers and Contact Information

The PATHS Project was designed and developed during the 2026 ABCD-ReproNim Hackathon by:

• Dr. Katie Bottenhorn, Assistant Professor, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA
• Dr. Angie Laird, Distinguished University Professor, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

For inquiries, please email us at abcdmultiverse@gmail.com.

Call for Analysis Teams: The PATHS Project

Garden of the forking PATHS: A pluralistic ABCD team heuristic study

We are pleased to invite research teams to participate in PATHS, a collaborative initiative designed to address a fundamental question in adolescent mental health: “What role do the hippocampus and amygdala play in the association between socioenvironmental factors and adolescent depression?”

The Scientific Challenge

While connections between early life experiences and depression are well-documented, understanding the underlying neurobiology is complicated by:

• The inherent complexity and ambiguity of socioenvironmental factors,
• The long temporal windows of childhood and adolescence,
• The multifaceted nature of subcortical development captured by various neural phenotypes.

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study provides a valuable opportunity to leverage "analytic flexibility" inherent to such a large dataset for a comprehensive answer to our research question.

Our Approach: Multiversal Team Science

The PATHS Project adopts a "many-worlds" or multiversal approach. Rather than relying on a single model, we aim to leverage the size of the ABCD Study dataset and analytic flexibility by recruiting independent teams to conduct parallel analyses. This pluralistic framework will allow us to synthesize a comprehensive, heuristic understanding of how brain development mediates the impact of early life experiences on adolescent depression.

Protocol & Instructions

What?

Research teams of two to three people are solicited to participate in a community project that aims to answer the scientific question, “What role do the hippocampus and amygdala play in the association between socioenvironmental factors and adolescent depression?” and investigate the variability in findings. Each team agrees to analyze Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study data from the 6.0 Release to answer this question, freely analyzing the data using their chosen analysis techniques, variables, and study timepoints.

Research teams are asked to conduct their analyses independently (i.e., not in discussion with other teams) and share their findings. In addition, teams are asked to submit a description of their statistical analyses and the statistics that they used to answer the scientific question. All teams will be anonymized prior to reporting or sharing of the submitted results.

When?

Some teams commenced work during the ABCD-ReproNim Hackathon in January 2026. Members of the broader ABCD data user community are invited to form teams and participate starting in February 2026. Research teams will be given three months to perform the analysis and report the results.

Why?

This is a fundamental scientific question in the broader context of adolescent mental health, addressing what role key brain regions (i.e., amygdala, hippocampus) play in established links between early life social and environmental experiences and lasting mental health consequences. The ABCD Study provides an incredible opportunity to study adolescent mental health in a pluralistic, team study for a comprehensive, heuristic understanding of this question. By taking a many-worlds approach, the PATHS project aims to leverage analytic flexibility to better understand the neurobiology of socioenvironmental influences on adolescent depression.

Data Use & Access

ABCD Study data access is pursuant to teams’ data use agreements. You must have access to the 6.0 ABCD data release to participate in data analysis. No data will be shared across data use agreements or redistributed as part of this project. Teams will only share information regarding:

• Names of the specific variables included in their analyses,
• Time points of data that were analyzed (e.g., baseline, two-year follow-up),
• Statistical model used to address the scientific question,
• Statistical results of their analyses (e.g., p-values, beta coefficients, effect sizes, etc.)

Authorship

Team members will not be allowed to release, publicize, or discuss their results until the end of a specified embargo period. Members of the organizing team (i.e., Katie Bottenhorn and Angie Laird) will draft the manuscript and circulate it for review and feedback. All members of teams who submit statistical results by the deadline will be eligible for authorship, listed alphabetically following the lead authors. Co-authors from the teams will be given two weeks to review the manuscript draft prior to submission. Sharing of data and/or results or discussing outcomes from the analyses with any other person during the embargo period is not allowed.

Contact Us

If you have any questions, please contact Drs. Katie Bottenhorn and Angie Laird at abcdmultiverse@gmail.com.